


Tourniquet

by PunishedPyotr



Series: Only Ones and Zeros [3]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Arguing, Decapitation, Dreams, Gen, Post-mortem, Virtual Reality, blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to implied past rape, minor gore, one-sided Oceliquid if you squint, reupload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 14:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13572411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunishedPyotr/pseuds/PunishedPyotr
Summary: Mantis crouches by Liquid’s body, still holding his head in his hands, staring at it.It’s unsettling.Eli,he whispers to him, still in the dream,it does not have to be this way.





	Tourniquet

RAY plunges off the side of Arsenal Gear and Snake follows, and Liquid’s wondering if the pest is just going to  _drown_  when Ocelot abruptly tries to take back his body while he’s distracted — RAY grinds to a halt and Snake catches up, clinging to its side, and it infuriates Liquid so much that he can just push Ocelot off and get RAY moving again.

They crash into a rocky beach, Liquid trying to scrape Snake off but succeeding more in getting Snake to just jump down instead of getting turned into a bloody smear against the gravel. Liquid wastes no time in opening RAY’s cockpit and leaping out, screaming wildly.

He always forgets Ocelot is  _old_  and Liquid can’t move his body the way he wants to.

Liquid only barely catches himself before Ocelot’s stupid nose gets broken, but from that position he’s already crouched and can propel himself forward, leaping towards Snake—-

Precious seconds are lost as Ocelot tries to wrench back control of his body again, mentally shouting at Liquid  _No, not yet_ , and Liquid crashes past Snake, holding his head. Snake’s got his gun out and Liquid has only just turned back towards him when he fires.

It’s a near miss, the bullet tearing away a chunk of Ocelot’s hair, the singed ends of it curling into his face. And it’s enough of a shock that Liquid gets another surge of strength and Ocelot is shut up again as Liquid lunges. He’s not going to give Snake a chance to fire again.

“It ends  _here_ , Snake!!”

“Liquid—!”

He catches Snake around the throat and sends them both skidding across the beach, small sharp stones flying behind them, shredding the back of Snake’s sneaking suit, the tension of the fabric turning small scrapes into large holes that do nothing to protect his skin from being scraped up.

Liquid punches him across the face, snarling, then Snake drives a knee up into Liquid’s stomach, kicking him to the side, and between that and the landing all the air is forced from Liquid’s lungs and he has a hell of a lot harder time recovering than he would have if he were still in his  _own_  body.

It’s only a difference of seconds but it’s enough. Snake scrambles for his gun and Liquid’s only just stood up again when he shoots.

He gets hit in the right arm, a few inches below Ocelot’s shoulder. Blood pulses out.

The shock doesn’t work in Liquid’s favor this time.

Next thing Liquid remembers, he’s trapped in the back of Ocelot’s mind again, and they’re in RAY’s cockpit again, except this time RAY is somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, hurtling east through the water like a gigantic metal penguin.

Ocelot is tying a tourniquet just above the gunshot wound. The bleeding slows.

Liquid feels like he can’t breathe, a curious sensation considering he hasn’t drawn breath in a few months over four years.

“Take that off,” he hisses.

“I’ll bleed to death,” Ocelot replies.

“You’ll lose your whole arm!”

“I’ll lose  _you_ ,” Ocelot says. He doesn’t sound remotely upset about that concept, but neither does he sound particularly pleased.

“Take it  _off_ ,” Liquid growls, bending his arm back to snatch it off himself, but the movement is weak and Ocelot easily holds him down with his other hand.

Liquid’s running low on blood already - on oxygen. He feels strange, disoriented, and part of him knows he’s screwed either way, either Ocelot starves him out of his body or they both die (or rather, Ocelot dies and Liquid loses his last hold on this world), but most of him doesn’t care about that and he’s just  _angry_ —

“ _Let go of me._ ”

“End of the line, Liquid,” Ocelot says. Liquid’s completely numb by now and when Ocelot removes his other hand to tighten the tourniquet still further, the only movement Liquid can manage is a few feeble twitches of his fingers.

“Oh god, Ocelot,” Liquid says, and there’s panic edging what passes for his voice, “take it off, take it off! Find some other way to stop the bleeding, I need oxygen, dammit!”

“I’m doing the best I can with what I have,” Ocelot says, titling his head back and closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“I— oh  _god_ , I can’t move, I can’t see- I, I can’t  _breathe_ , Ocelot-“

“You’re already dead, Liquid, time to move on.” He sighs. “Mind if we have a final word in your last few minutes?”

“W-What? Ocelot, the-“

“Because I really must thank you.” The ghost of a smile touches his exhausted face. “For giving me the perfect way to make a clean break from the Patriots.”

Liquid doesn’t know if the confusion he feels is because of the fact that blood is no longer flowing into his arm, or because of what Ocelot just said, because he’s  _sure_  he didn’t hear him right just now. “Wh… what the hell are you talking about?”

“My real goal all along… to bring down the Patriots. But I can’t do it from the inside. I thought Solidus was my best bet, but - he was an idiot. After everything I did for him, after selling out you and your comrades -  _my_  comrades — this was how the stubborn fool repaid me…”

“H-Huh?”

“In the end I had no choice but to throw him under the bus,” Ocelot says, “to stay in the Patriots’ good graces for just a little while longer, so I could continue using their own resources against them… but even I can’t keep this up forever.”

“That- you— O-Ocelot, what the hell? You’re lying.” Liquid feels like he’s in a fog and nothing makes sense. “You’re lying to me, w-why would you lie to me even  _now?_ ”

“I’m telling the truth, making up for lying to you all along,” Ocelot says, frowning. “Truthfully, I’ve always been fond of you, Liquid. I’ll admit I’d entertained the possibility of joining with you instead of Solidus - you hate them as well, and you would have worked alongside me quite nicely, not like Solidus, who always had to have everything his way.” He scoffs.

Whatever pride Liquid had has been lost somewhere in his struggle to stay conscious. “Why not, Ocelot, why not? Just undo this bloody tourniquet and we’ll fight the Patriots together, w-we can forget about everything at Shadow Moses, we’ve a  _common goal_ , Ocelot, I’ll- I’ll do anything you say, I’ll behave myself, oh god—-“

Ocelot laughs softly. “Either you die or we both do, Liquid. I’m afraid there’s no way around this.”

“Why the fuck did you join up with Solidus instead of me in the first place?!”

“It’s simple,” Ocelot said, “your father.”

“…wh…?”

“He isn’t as dead as everyone thinks he is, and that’s why the Patriots have to go - so they can’t keep him  _held_  anymore.” Even with his eyes closed, his expression still hardens. “You would have deferred to my judgement in the battle against the Patriots, but as soon as you found out that Big Boss still lives - if you  _can_ call it life at this point - I would have lost control of you entirely. The destruction of the Patriots would become secondary to your new goal of finding and killing your father, and I couldn’t risk that.”

Liquid can’t reply. He can’t think.

“I’m only telling you this because you’ve exhausted your second chance at life,” Ocelot says.

“O… Oce…”

“So that’s that,” Ocelot says, finally opening his eyes. “It’s not the whole story, but it’s enough, isn’t it? …I’ll miss you.”

Everything seems… faint, somehow. Muted. Far away.

“…why…? Ocelot, who… who are you, really…?”

Something’s pulling at him.

“Just an old man,” Ocelot murmurs, “trying to fix his mistakes.”

* * *

Liquid jerks up out of Mantis’ lap, his eyes wide. “Oh  _god_ ,” he says, “how could I have forgotten? Ocelot said-“

“Shh.” Mantis draws him back to himself, stroking his hair. Liquid doesn’t resist the move until Mantis says, “that does not matter anymore.”

Liquid jumps up.

“My father is  _still alive_ ,” he spits. He must have only not thought about it until now because he was already on his way out when Ocelot dropped that particular bombshell. “He’s- he’s- the Patriots are holding him, whatever state he’s in can’t be properly called life — I suppose he’s comatose or something. They must have recovered his body along with Gray Fox’s, he must have been in the same state as him.”

“And?” Mantis says flatly.

“And we’re  _in the Patriot network!_ ” Liquid says, gesturing furiously around at the simulated Shadow Moses he inhabits now. “If he’s in a coma, then he must be hooked up to  _something_. If that gets shut down…”

“If he is being ‘held’ then it is more likely that shutting down whatever he is hooked up to would allow him to walk freely. He may be perfectly recovered from what Snake did to him in Zanzibar Land and only in an artificial coma to keep him out the way.” He pauses slightly. “It  _is_  also possible that Ocelot did not have all the facts, or that he was lying to you… again,” he adds pointedly.

Liquid gives him an expectant look. “Nonetheless I’d at least like to investigate. If Big Boss really is alive…” He doesn’t need to finish that sentence. Its ending is obvious.

Mantis shakes his head. “I don’t think I can teach you how to travel through the network,” he says, “I have been using my psychic powers to do it.”

Liquid scowls. “Well, I’m technically a computer program now, aren’t I? Surely I can figure out a way to access other parts of-“

“As far as I know your AI was never given any access authorization outside of his immediate needs for the Shadow Moses VR. It is entirely possible that if you attempted, you would be considered a virus - and deleted.”

“Tch.”

“Or  _killed_ , to put it in a term you understand,” Mantis says dryly. “Do not try to pursue this, Eli.”

“Ocelot wouldn’t have had any reason to  _lie_  to me at that point. And whatever Father’s situation is, there’s got to be a way I can  _kill him_  from within the-“

Mantis stands up too. “Eli. He has already been defeated, you lost your opportunity for revenge back in 1999.”

Liquid takes a few irritable steps away from him, growling ferally. “As long as he’s still alive, I can  _have_  my revenge! I just need to figure out a way—“

“I  _know_  you heard what I said about getting deleted.”

“Well- there’s no guarantee that that would happen, especially if you actually  _helped_ me with this, Mantis, instead of arguing with me about it.”

Mantis narrows his eyes. “Why should I help you?”

Liquid whirls around to face him again, eyes wide, eyebrows scrunched down in rage. “ _What?_ ”

“Whatever state Big Boss is in, he is as good as dead and that is good enough for me, and it should be good enough for you, too.”

“Good enough?” Liquid repeats incredulously, “why the hell would it be good enough??”

“Because your obsession with getting revenge on your father is exactly why you lost your life in the first place!” Mantis snaps, suddenly showing his anger. “I  _enabled_  it for decades, but I am not going to let you pursue it now — it’s too dangerous! I could lose you again!”

“Again?!” Liquid says, “you died before I did —  _I_  lost  _you_ , you left me to fend for myself!!”

“Eli, that- I did not—“

“You could have retreated but you  _didn’t_ ,” Liquid snarls. “You  _let yourself_  get killed!”

“So did you!” Mantis snarls back, his voice going up half an octave, “you were so hell-bent on vengeance that you chased down Snake even though you had no reason to stay after he destroyed Metal Gear — you should have just left, retreated to fight another day - you might not have been infected by FOXDIE at that point! You might have lived!”

“I don’t give a damn what happens to me, Mantis, only that those who made me  _suffer_  get what’s coming to them!”

Mantis hisses in frustration, his hands clenching and unclenching. “Why do you have to be like this?” he says, “you have already died  _twice_  and you are willing to throw your new life away over something you already came to terms with? As well as  _you_  come to terms with something, anyway…”

“Oh, you’re just now noticing I’m  _like this?_ ” Liquid says, his face twisting sourly. “Sorry to burst your bubble, Mantis, but revenge is all I’ve  _got_.”

“You have  _me_.”

“And you had that stupid fucking AI you taught how to act like me!” Liquid bursts out, throwing his arms up, “or like an  _idealized_  version of me, right, Mantis? The  _AI_  Liquid Snake would  _never_  do this, he’d just stay here on this stupid virtual island like a good boy and  _never_  try to-“

“What?” Mantis says, genuinely taken aback, “you think I molded your AI counterpart to be  _docile?_ ”

“You  _did_ , didn’t you? Even you can’t stand what I’m really like, Mantis, isn’t that right?! Admit it, you liked the AI version of me better!!”

“I did not! He was not even  _real_.”

“Then why do you keep calling  _it_  a ‘him’?!”

Mantis doesn’t reply. It seems he didn’t even realize he had been doing that.

“Get out,” Liquid says in a low voice.

“Eli—-“

“Get out, go away! Go back to those Patriot bastards holding your leash now!!”

“Eli-!”

“Just  _leave!_  I don’t want to- just  _go_ , Mantis, and turn off this damned simulation when you do!”

He knows full well that Mantis isn’t sure what would happen to him if he did, and he doesn’t care. Hell, maybe it’d be better if the worst-case scenario were true, and disabling his AI would be the same, as far as his consciousness is concerned, as destroying his body.

Might as well, after all. No point in living if he had nothing to live  _for_.

“Eli,” Mantis tries, but Liquid doesn’t listen, just storms off in an arbitrary direction. Mantis doesn’t pursue. Within a minute, he can somehow sense that Mantis has left entirely.

The simulation continues running.

* * *

At the beginning of the Shadow Moses incident, Liquid Snake flew off in a HIND D to attack and shoot down two diversionary F-16s. This is replicated in the simulation by Liquid’s AI counterpart piloting the HIND D to a particular spot in the invisible wall surrounding Shadow Moses island - that is, the edge of the environment simulation - whereupon both Liquid’s AI and the HIND D model will be temporarily disabled until the point in time when he returns. However, if the HIND D is piloted to any other coordinates and attempts to exit the boundaries of the simulation, it will collide with the invisible wall and sustain enough damage that it may lose control and crash.

When Liquid bails out of the HIND D, there is a preset location he is supposed to land at. In the real Shadow Moses incident, Liquid’s parachute had been caught by the winds of the blizzard, whisking him through the air until he crashed, rather ungracefully, into a tree, getting the parachute tangled in the branches and sending Liquid himself flying into a snowbank. He returned inside unharmed and didn’t bother taking the parachute down out of the branches, and Solid Snake, seeing it later, interpreted it as a message to him and as such the whole thing had to be coded into the Shadow Moses VR.

Thus, no matter where the HIND D is exactly when Liquid exits the vehicle (providing it’s above a certain height and the parachute object is in play), the wind is programmed to drag his parachute and therefore him directly into the tree. Normally this happens without incident, due to “Snake’s” battle with the HIND D taking place at the communications tower, not too far from the snowfield the tree is right next to. However, if the HIND D happens to be father away from the parachute-eating tree when Liquid bails, the wind can sometimes glitch and blow in unusual ways…

…dragging Liquid right into the rotors of the helicopter.

* * *

Mantis gives Liquid enough time to cool down and then returns to the simulation. Immediately he notes that Liquid is asleep, and he’s initially relieved - and then remembers that not only does Liquid need no sleep now that his ‘body’ is an AI framework, but he’s physically incapable of it.

That, combined with the smoke rising from the heliport, is disquieting.

Mantis walks over and sees the wreckage of the HIND D scattered in front of the building, some parts of it still on fire. He also sees Liquid’s body and even though he  _knows_  Liquid is perfectly fine, just sleeping, he’s still alarmed and he’s still at his side in a second.

He’s missing his head.

Part of his shoulder, too. There’s a lot of blood everywhere, all dried - or, frozen, really - by now, although a bit of it still seeps from Liquid’s hacked-up flesh. It looks bad, red and chewed, and Mantis can see in the sleeping Liquid’s memories that the helicopter rotors got him before he even had much of a chance to react, decapitating him messily.

Mantis takes a step back, then looks around, his eyes finally settling on his head, which he walks over and picks up. His whole neck is basically gone, the wound ragged and ugly, and there’s blood soaked into the skin around his nose and mouth. Liquid’s expression is only one of mild surprise.

Mantis absent-mindedly traces a finger around the tattered edge of Liquid’s trachea, and mentally reaches out to him.

Liquid is dreaming.

He’s, unsurprisingly, dreaming about Big Boss, and he’s angry and he’s  _miserable_  and even in his dreams he doesn’t want to admit that he’s scared, but he is. Mantis unceremoniously pulls him out of that dream, psychically yanking him, so sharply and abruptly that the nightmare shifts and all Liquid is aware of is someone  _grabbing_  him - he feels hands all over his body and he opens his mouth to scream—-

Mantis crouches by Liquid’s body, still holding his head in his hands, staring at it.

It’s unsettling.

_Eli_ , he whispers to him, still in the dream,  _it does not have to be this way._

They’re on an island somewhere in the vague Pacific, one with blocky pink rocks that tower over the shore; it’s not a place that Liquid has ever been and it may not even exist in the real world, but Liquid’s imagined it before and Mantis is familiar with it - it’s not the first time Liquid’s dreamed about being here, after all. Liquid, or rather, Eli, as in this dream he really doesn’t look any older than thirteen, is sitting on one of the rocks, and Mantis is here too, a child as well. They’re both shirtless and barefoot and Mantis knows better than to question it.

“I am worried about you,” Mantis says, an adult voice from behind a kid’s gas mask.

Eli grunts. He’s listening, though.

“And I am worried about you because I care for you, Eli. I am terrified of losing you again.”

“ _I_  lost  _you_ ,” Eli says again, not looking at Mantis.

“…I am sorry.”

“I… I, I lost you even before Shadow Moses, didn’t I?” Eli goes on, “all those times you let me hold you and tell you I loved you, you were just placating me, weren’t you? And what you did with the AI version of me - I don’t know if you were lonely or curious but even you didn’t want to deal with my issues anymore after you’d finally gotten rid of me…”

“Eli, it wasn’t like that.”

“It’s— it’s fine, if it is. I’ve always thought you only stayed with me because you felt obligated to.”

Mantis reaches out and runs his fingers through Eli’s hair affectionately. It seems strange somehow, with the way Eli is taller than Mantis in the dream. “I know you’ve always thought that,” Mantis says, “but I have always told you that it was not true.”

“So you said.”

“I have never lied to you in my life, Eli. I’m not sure I am even capable of it.”

“Hm.”

Mantis takes a moment to reflect how weird it is, to crouch in the snow and stroke the hair of a severed head being held in his other blood-sticky hand.

“The fact that I spent so long with your AI counterpart, and still speak of him as though he were really you, is a testament to how much I missed you, Eli,” he says.

“What… was he like?” Eli’s almost afraid to ask.

“You. He was like you, as close as I could get him. I even explained to him all the various ways you  _annoy_  me.” He sighs. “If this situation had come up with the AI instead of you, and he had not reacted the way you just did, immediately wanting to find a way to kill Big Boss, then I would have been rather disillusioned and upset.”

“…I really hate him.” He’s referring both to the AI counterpart he’s jealous of, and his father, and himself. Mantis keeps petting his hair.

“I know,” he says helplessly. “But to go after Big Boss - it is too risky.”

There’s a long silence.

Eli doesn’t know what to say.

“Eli,” Mantis says gently, “even if I did help you, and we found a way for you to safely interfere with Big Boss’ life support or whatever is going on with him, and he did die - would that really be an acceptable ending? To kill him when he is helpless, and not even aware of your presence? To let him go down without a fight?”

Eli hesitates, then shakes his head. It’s the same logic as why he never had Mantis just give him a spontaneous aneurysm or anything like that, and the same reason why he’d wanted revenge on Solid Snake. He wants to  _kill_  Big Boss, not just  _have him die_. He wants to face him in battle and emerge victorious, and look him in the eye right before he slits his throat so that he  _knows_  how exactly it came to this.

Quietly ending his life while he’s trapped in some Patriot coma, without even the chance to leave a message about the who or the why, is an even crueler mockery of Liquid’s desire for revenge than his twin brother lighting Big Boss on fire in Zanzibar Land.

“…I’m sorry I blew up at you,” Eli says lamely. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“I know,” Mantis says, “you do that a lot.” He stands, both in the dream and the simulation. “I am going to do a soft reset on the VR program - I had to do this a few times with the AI, he was  _almost_  as foolhardy and careless as you. You will wake up in a few seconds.”

Eli nods.

Shadow Moses flickers. The HIND D is intact and where it belongs, and Liquid is kneeling in front of Mantis with Mantis’ clean hands on either side of his face, tilting his head up to look at him.

Funnily enough, in this digital world he remembers every detail of his dreams, something that was impossible in the real world.

“Why would you teach my AI counterpart how to irritate you?” Liquid asks wryly.

“I was only trying to convince myself that the AI you was close enough,” Mantis says. “I never quite managed that. It really was not the same.”

“How so?”

“He was too predictable. At the same time, he had no mind for me to read, and I really just could not get used to that.”

Liquid finally stands up, laughing despite himself, then pulls off Mantis’ mask and kisses him.

“Mmm.”

“You know, of course,” Mantis says when Liquid finally lets him go, “that if we could figure out a way for you to have your revenge - on Snake, I suppose, since he is still a capable soldier and not in a coma - without exposing you to some risk you would be helpless to defend yourself against…”

“You wouldn’t pull out any of this ‘trying to protect me’ nonsense?”

“Sometimes I wish I did not have to pick between keeping you safe and making you happy,” Mantis sighs. “But… I suppose that is only who you are. I would not want to change that.”

“That’s so sweet of you to say, Mantis.”

“Oh, wipe that silly grin off your face, Eli.” He shakes his head. “As it stands, I am likely to get the opportunity to find Snake sometime in the next few years - whenever they finally see fit to unleash the girl on the world. But you…”

“He killed you, too. I think you deserve revenge on him almost as much as I do.” He pauses in mock consideration. “Just think of me when you tear his intestines out, won’t you?”

“Hm. I wonder…”

“?”

“It’s nothing, for now, anyway. Let’s have this discussion again whenever Ocelot resurfaces with that clean break you ‘gave’ him.”

“Oh, I almost forgot about that with everything else going on…”

“You have had a lot to process these past few days, Eli,” Mantis says, patting him on the cheek condescendingly. Liquids leans into his touch regardless.

“Don’t tell me that was a computer joke just now.”

“Who, me? Never…”

**Author's Note:**

> ((any and all comments will be forewarded to aireyv! i will either copy/paste their reply to me or they will reply on their own account! have a nice day!!! if you have any questions, just ask!!!!)


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